NASA Discovers Eighth Planet Orbiting Distant Star

2017-12-14 1

NASA announced on December 14 that it had found an eighth planet orbiting Kepler-90, a Sun-like star about 2,545 light-years from Earth. The discovery means “our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star,” NASA said.

The planet, called Kepler-90i, was found in data gathered by NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope with the help of Google machine learning, or artificial intelligence.

NASA said the “sizzling hot, rocky planet” orbits the star every 14.4 days. Credit: NASA via Storyful